In today’s world, it seems rather pointless to have cash. You’ve seen it on the Visa commercials, but it definitely does slow things up at the cash register. For convenience at tax time and keeping track of your spending, credit or debit cards are the way to go. If I can’t use a credit card, I occasionally use checks still, but only if I have to, otherwise I’ll use EFT or ACH (Bill payments from my online banking account at my local credit union).
Here are some reasons why I hate cash:
- It tends to disappear, unaccounted, from my wallet for the ‘little things’ like food and quick purchases
- It doesn’t import into Mint or a personal finance software so that I can track and account for it at tax time
- It doesn’t earn points that I can redeem for cool stuff like my credit card does
- It is dirty, and difficult to deal with in my wallet compared to my pretty little cards
Here are some reasons why some people still love cash:
- Its a tangible, physical account of your money, you know exactly how much you have and when its gone, its gone
- Some people like to use it for budgeting because of the same reason above. There are various envelop budgeting methods that use cash
- It can come in handy when traveling to areas where you don’t trust people for fraud reasons or they just don’t accept debit/credit
- It can be a psychological thing – It makes people feel happier or wealthier when they have it (Personally, I’d rather have a bunch of silver and gold!)
If you can control your spending on your credit card, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t use a rewards credit card for all of the purchases that you can. You get points, you can account for your spending better in your personal financial tools, and you can see your trending for spending a lot better in those tools when its categorized.
Any other good reasons for or against the dollar?
{ 0 comments }
